online videocensus - nielsenen-us.nielsen.com/sitelets/cls/digital/online-video...video content and...

O N L I N E V I D E O C E N S U S GLOSSARY2013

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RESEARCH SAMPLEVideoCensus uses the same RDD//Online panel as

NetView, with hundreds of thousands of panelists

worldwide, to effectively report on the long tail of

video content and provide detailed demographic

analysis of online video consumption across all

sites. RDD//Online is a proprietary methodology

designed to marry the representativeness of an

RDD panel with the depth provided by an online-

recruited panel.

The RDD ‘core’ of the methodology is relied upon

to provide a baseline for representative demography

and online behavior. This baseline is used to create

demographic and behavioral weights for the online-

recruited panel. Our patented user prompting

ensures we have the best demographic data to base

our weights upon.

SAMPLE RECRUITMENTThe RDD//Online panel consists of 2 sub samples,

based on recruitment methodology: RDD and

Online panel.

RDD PANELNielsen RDD panels are recruited using the

industry-recommended Random Digital Dial

methodology as well as proven methods to

secure maximum participation from this

randomly selected sample. A random sample

of phone numbers is selected from a base of all

residential phone numbers in the country, and the

recruitment is conducted by telephone. Eligible

panelists that are recruited to participate in the

panel are mailed a membership packet including

the tracking software, installation instructions,

and a toll-free number for technical support.

RDD recruitment creates the most representative

sample with highest demographic and behavioral

data accuracy with minimum sample bias.

ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY

RECRUITMENTSAMPLE

http://en-us.nielsen.com/sitelets/cls/digital/online-videocensus.html

3Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company

ONLINE-RECRUITED PANELNielsen has partnered with various established,

panel-based market research companies to provide

on-going recruitment of a representative sample of

Internet users into the Online sample. Prospective

panel members are recruited via an e-mail invitation

from partner companies or via online advertising

(banner, sponsored links, etc.). Prospective panelists

are then directed to the Online panel recruitment

website where they are presented with research

program details (including Nielsen’s privacy

policy) and are asked to provide their demographic

profile information. Upon agreement to the privacy

policy and completion of the demographic survey

and, the NetSight meter is downloaded to the

panelist’s computer. Nielsen never bundles its meter

with other software, and requires all panel recruits

to visit our website so that the process is

completely transparent.

Nielsen has an on-going panel management system

to ensure Online panel sample quality. This includes

performing affiliate partners evaluation analysis

to prevent potential recruitment bias; collecting

demo profile information from all panelists

consistently, and contacting with our panelists

in the same method as in RDD, which was done in

the local language of each country. The primary goal

of Online panel recruitment is the establishment of

a representative group of Internet users, controlling

for as many sample-biasing characteristics

as possible.

WEIGHTING AND CALIBRATION PROCEDURES Nielsen uses an iterative proportional fitting (IPF)

technique to weight and calibrate the panel data

prior to reporting. These procedures weight the

panelists to targets derived for both demographic

and behavioral metrics. In addition to demographic

weighting targets based upon universe estimates,

which are calculated through the global

enumeration process, additional demographic and

behavioral weighting targets based on the RDD

panel are incorporated.

THE METER Right at the heart of the Nielsen user-centric offering

is the patented NetSight desktop meter. Unique

among measurement suppliers, by measuring

online activity at desktop operating system level

we are able to offer the most accurate perspective

on what a PC user is actually doing online, and

offline, not only what their computer is doing on

the internet. That is, whilst most measurement

systems measure what content is being delivered

to a web browser (and over claim consumption),

we are able to tell which window or application

is actually in focus or active and therefore can

be observed. This enables us to make the most

accurate estimates of time spent available.

A subset of metered panelists is prompted

with a login window at the beginning of a

session to identify the person who is using the

PC. All household members are listed in the

login window, so that it is easy to select. This

information is then used to individualize data for

non-prompted panelists.


METHODOLOGY


THE METER (continued) For these panelists, activity measurement and data

retrieval have been designed to be as unobtrusive

as possible. The meter tracks separate individuals

using the PC by initiating a prompt at the start of

the session, requiring user identification. If the

machine is inactive for a period of 30 minutes,

the user prompt will reappear. This is similar to

the multiple-login feature when starting up a PC

running Microsoft Windows. The data is reported

for each individual. This is the only intervention

required from the panel member’s perspective.

All data is securely and unobtrusively transmitted

to Nielsen in real time, while the panel member

browses the Internet. Panel members are not

required to record their internet activity or to save

or transfer data to Nielsen.

SESSION RULE CREDITING Nielsen currently defines session rules with an

identified start and end time, as defined by specific

computer activity (opening and closing of a

browser) and/ or a defined period of user inactivity

within a browser. VideoCensus has changed its

current session crediting rule so that the “end time”

identified for browser inactivity is extended to four

hours, rather than 30 minutes. With the change in

session rules, VideoCensus will continue to report

new streams up to 4 hours after computer inactivity;

all new streams that fire after 4 hours of inactivity

will be excluded from reporting.

SYNDICATION AND DISTRIBUTED CONTENTTo report the complete stream volume of an

online video publisher, VideoCensus includes

streams that originate on a site but are embedded

or delivered through a syndicated player on

another site. This is achieved by measuring

the video player and stream URL, not the page

URL, when determining where a stream is

to be credited. Syndicated content is measured

in this way whether or not a site has deployed

VideoCensus tags. Consider the following

examples for illustration:

• A YouTube clip that has been embedded

on Facebook is credited to YouTube. The

VideoCensus system observes the URL of the

video played and clearly determines the URL

to originate from a YouTube source, even if

consumed on a Facebook page.

• A Hulu clip that has been tagged with

VideoCensus tags is played on MSN. Hulu

receives the credit for this clip as the beacon

(tag call to a Nielsen server) sends the Hulu

Client ID each time this clip is played.

NOTE – Content that is delivered as an asset to a

distribution partner and served via that distribution

partner’s server and player infrastructure would

not be included in the originating site’s stream

counts or audience projections (as in this

case there is no stream URL or tag URL within

the originating site’s control to be leveraged

for crediting).

METHODOLOGY




TIME SPENT VIEWING (TSV) METRIC Time Spent Viewing (TSV) measurement is derived

from the panel for both actively- and passively-

measured streams. At an instance level, each stream

is assigned a duration in seconds. Note that there is

no minimum duration requirement.

The meter installed on the panelist’s computer

sees a tag fire (for tagged entities) or a stream URL

loaded (for passive entities) and starts counting

duration until a stop event is recorded. Examples of

stop events include:

• Another stream URL is initiated

• The user uses the transport controls to pause

or stop the clip

• The audio accompanying the video clip ends

Duration is capped at 4 hours. This allows for all

reasonable expectations of long viewing activity

on a single stream, such as a live sporting event,

where the length of programming may extend to

3 or 4 hours. All streams longer than this 4 hour

threshold are excluded from TSV calculations.

FULL EPISODE CONTENT MEASUREMENT Full episode TV shows are measured as a collection

of segments and not as a combined episode. Each

stream within an episode is measured discretely.

For example, a 42 minute episode broken up into

5 segments (each preceded by an advertisement),

measures 10 separate streams (5 ads, and

5 content segments) and credits the 5 content

streams to the appropriate entity (the ad streams

are currently excluded from VideoCensus).

Both active and passive methodologies credit

full episode viewing in this way. With passive

measurement, the meter on the panelist’s

computer observes multiple unique streams

(one per segment) even if the stream protocol

utilizes a single stream URL to deliver all segments.

In order to ensure tagged clients’ full episodes

are measured in the same manner, tagged clients

send a start beacon for each individual video

segment. This ensures consistency between

the Passive and Active (tagged/census)

measurement methodologies.



HYBRID MEASUREMENT

USER ACTIONS Given the interactivity and advanced functionality

provided by online video players, it is difficult to

measure user actions consistently across websites,

players, and protocols. For this reason, we have

standardized on the following rules for user actions

that occur:

A STREAM IS COUNTED

• For each “chapter” segment (full episodes),

the first time it is accessed, regardless of

whether an ad plays in between the chapters.

• For each single clip viewed. If replayed from

cache, an additional stream is only counted

for census-enabled (tagged) sites.

• If an ad interrupts the video experience

(including ads in between chapters)

a new stream is counted when the

content resumes

NO ADDITIONAL STREAMS ARE COUNTED

IN THE EVENT OF:

• Scrubbing (fast forward or rewind) to

a previously accessed chapter without

ad interruption

• Scrubbing back to the beginning of

the stream without ad interruption

• Pausing and then resuming the video

HYBRID METHODOLOGY Hybrid methodology uses both panel and census

data to inform online audience projections.

The panel is used to understand the demography

and behavioral profiles of actual people under

measurement while the tag data is used to

understand the gaps in panel coverage and

create an activity profile of people who are not

under measurement and provide a target for

stream views.

VideoCensus’ new Total panel type includes activity

outside of home and work locations accounting

for previously unmeasured audience from mobile

devices, secondary PCs and access points outside

of home and work.

CREATING A PERSON-CENTRIC HYBRID APPROACH The tag can capture the most accurate count of

stream views if implemented completely across a

publisher’s site portfolio and generally a gap will

often be seen when comparing tag stream views to

panel-projected stream views.

The larger the gap, the more likely that there is

additional stream activity unaccounted for by the

current panel projections. VideoCensus leverages

the highly-accurate tag data to inform and calibrate

Nielsen’s panel projections of volume metrics (i.e.,

stream views and time spent viewing); however,

no adjustment is made to the unique viewer

calculation as Nielsen’s audience projections

already project to a total active internet universe.

METHODOLOGY




EXAMPLE Step 1: Panelist views video on a publisher’s site

(i.e. ccnnn.com)

Step 2: Two URLs fire on panelist’s machine

and are logged by the NetSight meter for the video

view instance:

• Stream URL: rtmp://ht.cdn.tunner.com/cnb/

big/us/2011/07/08/bts.ranger.fan.falls.dies.

wfaa_640x360_dl.flv

• Nielsen Video Tag URL:

• http://secure-us.imrworldwide.com/cgi-bin/

m?ci=us-120340&c6=vc,c01&cc=1&tl=dab0-

tech/2011/07/17/bts.ranger.fan.falls.

dies&rnd=4685686123456789

Step 3: Nielsen collection servers also log instance

of the tag URL firing for panelist and for every other

viewer of the video. The data is aggregated at end of

month to produce a census count of video activity

for the site.

Step 4: Nielsen Loader collects all logs

from panelists’ meters, parses stream URLs, and

credits stream URLs to Nielsen MarketView entities

(see section below for details about Nielsen’s

MarketView system)

• Stream URL: Stream dictionary pattern for

the site is matched to stream URL in Step 2

• Tag URL: ci=us-120340 from tag URL in Step 2

is matched to site parent entity, and c6=vc,c01

is matched to ccnnn.com channel entity

Step 5: Unweighted run aggregates all credited

NETWORK (stream URLs) and TAGGED (tag URLs)

instance data by site for the month into raw counts.

Step 6: Site is assigned a reportable data source

for displaying in VideoCensus (NETWORK or

TAGGED). Only one data source per site/entity

can be chosen and reported on in VideoCensus

for a given month.

Step 7: Panelist weights are applied at the

raw instance level for reportable data source

(NETWORK or TAGGED) and aggregated to

produce weighted projections for audience,

streams, and duration metrics. For Hybrid Total

audience, a virtual sample is incorporated by

duplicating weighted records from select Home

and Work users whose demographic profile

matches “Other Only” users (as identified per

global enumeration survey).

Step 8: Streams and duration for tagged entities

are scaled to reflect census stream count levels

• A scaling factor is calculated at the site level

(includes program/client defined entities)

and applied at the stream URL instance level

• The census data from Step 3 is divided by

weighted streams from Step 7 to produce a

scaling factor, e.g., if weighted Total streams

is 47,000,000 and census streams are

62,000,000, then the scaling factor is 1.32

(62,000,000/47,000,000)

• The weighted streams and duration in

Step 7 are multiplied by the scaling factor,

e.g., 47MM streams is scaled to 62MM, and

128MM minutes is scaled to 169MM minutes

(128MM x 1.32)



PASSIVE MEASUREMENT: PANEL For breadth coverage of the online viewing audience,

and for providing estimates of the overall video

viewing audience, VideoCensus employs a panel-

based approach. Doing so enables measurement of

all sites that meet a minimum panelist threshold.

The panel-based methodology does not require

site participation (although collaboration with

Nielsen on stream URL definitions is encouraged).

Each member of the RDD//Online panel has a

software application running on his/her computer

which communicates to Nielsen all of the online

viewing behaviors.

Each computer session is credited to a specific

panelist, for whom Nielsen has a rich demographic

profile. The stream URLs consumed by each panelist

are credited to the corresponding site on which the

stream was watched based on the stream dictionary

definitions in place within the VideoCensus stream

classification system.

ACTIVE/TAGGING MEASUREMENT: CENSUSActive measurement, where a site has deployed

VideoCensus tags, complements and enhances

passive measurement. With this model the video

player sends a beacon ping to a Nielsen server

that communicates additional information about

the media being streamed. This cooperative

approach enables granular reporting across each

of a publisher’s MarketView entities (see section

below for details about Nielsen’s MarketView

system), as well as client-defined custom roll-ups.

ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY

CLICK HERE FOR A GRAPHICAL EXAMPLE OF PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MEASUREMENT, IN THE ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS QUICK START GUIDE.

TAGGING


http://en-us.nielsen.com/sitelets/cls/digital/Online-VideoCensus-QuickStartGuide.pdf



MARKETVIEW LEVELS

VideoCensus uses the MarketView hierarchy, which

is employed across all Nielsen audience

measurement products. MarketView was designed

to provide our clients with additional clarity into

the logical taxonomy of site ownership and better

visibility as to what Internet sites best compete

against each other. The key benefits of the

MarketView hierarchy are:

• Provides buyers of Internet advertising with

better visibility into their purchasing options

by focusing on the available audience within

specific groupings of viewer interest and/or

content segments.

• Provides sellers of Internet advertising

space “apples to apples” comparison of

their content specific opportunity vs.

competitive opportunities for audiences

of similar viewer interest.

• Provides a reporting standard that allows

clients to better understand Brands and their

Channels as well as their ultimate Parent.

With MarketView, all the URLs contributing to a

Brand or Channel can be aggregated for a complete

view. This results in higher sample sizes and

offers clients:

• More robust drill downs

• More companies will make cut-off

requirements for reporting

• Custom research and analytics can dig deeper

and perform more sophisticated data mining

• A true comparison of content

between competitors

In summary, the MarketView system provides

improved data for competitive intelligence, Internet-

user behavior and demographics through a content-

based hierarchy of companies and organizations on

the Internet.

MarketView reports show the relationship or

hierarchy of the organization within a parent

company. There are three levels to MarketView:

PARENT LEVEL

The Parent level is the highest level of aggregation

within a single roll-up. This level consists of the

aggregation of two lower levels called the Brand

and Channel levels. Traffic from these lower levels

will contribute the overall traffic number for the

Parent level it resides under.

BRAND LEVEL

The Brand level resides one level underneath the

Parent level. This level consists of the aggregation

of a lower level called the Channel level. Traffic

from these lower levels will contribute the overall

traffic number for the Brand level it resides

under. This overall Brand level traffic, in turn, will

contribute to the total traffic for its Parent. The

Brand level can sometimes be represented as a

subsidiary or operating unit.

CHANNEL LEVEL

The Channel level is the lowest level of the

MarketView hierarchal structure in which

domain(s) and/or URL(s) can be aggregated

under. The Channel level always resides

underneath the Brand level. Traffic from this lower

level will contribute the overall traffic number for

the Brand level it resides under. This overall Brand

level traffic, in turn, will contribute to the total

traffic for its Parent.

A Channel is defined as a destination on the

web where editorial consistency is focused on

a specific view of interest such as news, sports,

and travel. A Channel is the lowest level of

aggregation. Channel content must be logically

consistent with the Brand category classification.

Channels need to be consistent with the look and

feel of the Brand.

MARKETVIEW HIERARCHY



COMBINING METHODOLOGIES INTO STANDARD METRICS Regardless of whether sites are tagged, VideoCensus includes all sites on which a minimum panelist

threshold has been reached. The chart below highlights the metrics that vary based on the collection

methodology used for each entity. For a complete listing and definition of all metrics included in

VideoCensus reports, please refer to the Digital Terms Glossary.

ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY

REPORTING

Unique Viewers Metric

Total Streams Metric

Time Spent Viewing Metric

Content Crediting Model

Projected from panel based

on meter observations of the

VideoCensus tags

Projected from panel based on

meter observations of VideoCensus

tags.A scaling factor is applied

to align with server-based count

(census) of collected start events

Projected from panel based on meter

observations of VideoCensus tags

combined with meter events

(such as pause, stop) and the

presence of audio. A scaling factor

is applied to align with the census

counts for streams.

Streams are credited to the

appropriate MarketView entity

(and custom roll-up) based on

granular crediting information

delivered in the VideoCensus tag.


on meter observations of

stream URLs


on meter observations of

stream URLs

Projected from panel

based on meter observations

of stream URLs combined

with meter events (such

as pause, stop) and the

presence of audio.

Streams are credited to the appropriate

MarketView entity based on matches to

stream definitions in the VideoCensus

processing system. These definitions are

continually refined by a team of specialists

and informed by input from publishers.

METRIC ACTIVELY MEASURED ENTITIES

PASSIVELY MEASURED ENTITIES


http://en-us.nielsen.com/sitelets/cls/digital/Digital-Terms-Glossary.pdf



ADVERTISING Video advertisements are currently excluded from

VideoCensus reports, however, Nielsen does report

on Video Ad Network traffic. Nielsen excludes

advertising streams based on the determination

that ads are streamed from a 3rd party server

(e.g., Atlas or DoubleClick) or from a location on

a publisher’s CDN that is used for serving ads.

Additionally, by viewing ads within the context of the

content they are affiliated with, Nielsen develops

classification rules to effectively exclude advertising

streams while still crediting valid content streams.

This ad exclusion also applies to “house ads” (or

promos); those designed to promote the content of

a specific site or the site itself and are played within

the normal rotation of ad inventory.

ADULT CONTENT All adult content is currently excluded from

VideoCensus reporting.


EXCLUDED FROM MEASUREMENT


ABOUT NIELSEN Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and

measurement company with leading market positions in marketing

and consumer information, television and other media measurement,

online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related

properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries,

with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands.

For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and

the Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN

Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service names are trademarks or

registered trademarks of their respective companies.


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